A Louisiana mom of three is facing jail time for her role in the kidnapping and murder of a 4-year-old girl. Victoria Cox accepted a plea deal that will lessen her sentence, but she will still spend decades in jail. In 2024, for reasons that are unknown, Cox helped her childhood friend Daniel Callihan commit some truly heinous crimes against the 4-year-old and her older sister. After killing the girls’ mother, who he reportedly had dated in the past, Callihan kidnapped the young girls, and that’s when Cox got involved. It is incredibly disappointing that a mother would help someone cause harm to another mother’s children, but at least she will be punished for what she’s done.
On November 24, 2025, a judge in Mississippi sentenced 34-year-old Cox to 40 years in prison, People reported. The woman pleaded guilty to one count each of second-degree murder and kidnapping after she made a plea deal with prosecutors, who initially charged her with capital murder, kidnapping, and sexual battery.
The murder charge carries a sentence of 40 years, while the kidnapping sentence carries 25 years. As a part of the plea deal, she will not serve the 25 years on a consecutive basis.
The charges come from her involvement with Callihan when he murdered 35-year-old Callie Brunett in Louisiana on June 11, 2024. After killing her, Callihan kidnapped Brunett’s two daughters, who were 4 and 6 at the time. He first took them to Cox’s home in Louisiana before driving them all across state lines into Mississippi.
According to a “written factual basis” obtained by People, Callihan said he and Cox engaged in criminal sexual activity with the 6-year-old girl. He murdered the 4-year-old girl, and Cox did nothing to stop it, despite knowing he was killing her. He confessed to the crimes and was given three life sentences.
On June 18, 2024, the Hinds County coroner who performed the girl’s autopsy announced her cause of death was asphyxiation due to suffocation, KLFY reported.
“I would assume, and this is clearly an assumption, that she possibly died from asphyxiation or suffocation, but we would have to wait on the medical examiner before releasing that information,” Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade said at the time.
The girls were found in Mississippi days after their mother’s murder, according to a report from WDSU. An Amber Alert was issued for both girls, which led to a massive search between multiple law enforcement agencies.
US marshals found the 4-year-old girl’s body in a wooded area approximately 30 yards behind a house, WVUE reported. “It’s traumatic even for my officers to see this,” Wade said. “We didn’t come to work to see this today.” They found her older sister injured but alive in the same area.
After calling the scene “horrible” and “tragic,” Wade said he suspected the area was used for human trafficking.
“Based on the crime scene, what it looks like, this may be the place where there has been some human trafficking done,” he said, per WVUE. “We see cages, small animal cages. This is very, very disturbing to me as a police chief and as a father to witness and see what I saw.”
In a post-Miranda interview with investigators, Cox corroborated Callihan’s account of the sexual assault and murder of the children, People reported.
Callihan pleaded guilty to his crimes and accepted a plea deal in August 2025, a release from the Louisiana division of the United States Attorney’s Office stated. Although he received three life sentences, he avoided the death penalty.
Cox agreed to provide evidence to prosecutors and testify against Callihan. She also faced the possibility of the death sentence, but her charges were only local, People reported. She agreed to plead guilty by submitting a handwritten note to the judge.
“I’ve been trying to get my attorney to come go over my plea deal with me, but he has failed to do so. I would like to accept it. Can you put me on the court docket?” the note read.
Hinds County Circuit Judge Winston Kidd honored her request and admonished her. Kidd asked her how a woman who has children who are 9, 8 and 6 years old commit such a crime.
As a result of her plea deal, Cox avoided a trial that was set to start on December 8, 2025.
